Closet Cases: Aloha Shirt Wearers Open Up

It’s official: Tom Selleck’s parrot-sporting “Magnum, P.I.” scarlet aloha shirt can’t hold a feather to the crouching-tiger silk number that reader Roman Loyola wears to Hawaiian events, or the firetruck model that San Francisco firefighters made for Jack Shanley of Burlingame.

Roman Loyola of San Francisco models his “special occasion” aloha shirt on Maui.

Hawaii Insider received those images, plus a number of aloha shirt aficionados’ stories, in response to her Jan. 5 post about the late aloha wear manufacturer Alfred Shaheen, who popularized classic South Pacific and highly stylized designs.

One commenter, capitan17, claims to be a teacher with 90 aloha shirts who wears a different one “every day of the whole semester”; another reader, georgedb, commented that he wore an aloha shirt to Alameda High School back in 1972 after transferring from Southern California. For his mother’s 80th birthday, he wrote, his sister “bought about 100 of them at thrift stores and had them on a rack as guests arrived so they could put one on. The best were hung on walls as decorations. Others, she turned into pillows for the party.”

Other readers are a tad more selective about their aloha wear. Loyola describes his tiger shirt, purchased at Avanti Shirts in Waikiki, as “a nicely made silk shirt that I wear only on special Hawaiian occasions, mostly when my wife’s hula class performs.” In the photo, he’s at his brother’s wedding rehearsal dinner in Maui. If you can’t make it to Avanti’s store at 307 Lewers St., you can also shop online for what it calls “postcards of paradise”: men’s and women’s silk shirts inspired by classic prints from the 1930s to the 1950s, for about $60 a pop.

San Francisco firemen made this aloha shirt for Jack Shanley of Burlingame.

Shanley’s “favorite Hawaiian shirt” features a design called “On the Scene”: a flurry of firetrucks on a blue background. Made by KimoShan, a company founded by a pair from San Francisco’s Firehouse One, the 100 percent cotton shirt can be ordered online for $30; a portion of all proceeds benefit “firefighter charities,” according to KimoShan’s <a href="Web site. (You can also order a cotton aloha shirt in the “First Alarm” print, a melange of ladders, firefighters’ hats, fire hydrants, firehouses, Dalmatians, fire engines and other emblems.)

Tucked-in Tom Selleck.

And just for comparison’s sake, I have to include the picture of Tom Selleck in his “Magnum, P.I.” glory days that was linked to the Jan. 5 comment of Hawaii Insider reader omnipotent1. While Tom’s tucked-in shirt drew the politically incorrect ire of commenter kcils, another reader seemed to allude to the parrot-wear more positively: “I was in Hawaii … there was a picture of Tom Selleck in a red Hawaiian shirt,” wrote tjcasas. “We found it in a men’s store. It was really nice with good material, but too expensive at the time. I wish now my husband or I would’ve bought it.”

Also earlier this week, Hawaii Insider mentioned that Reyn Spooner was one of very few manufacturers ever able to license Shaheen’s signature prints. But you can also enjoy a classic Shaheen look at oceanfront Huggo’s On the Rocks in Kailua-Kona — although it won’t be on an aloha shirt.

Eric von Platen Luder, the Big Island restaurant’s owner, was researching Hawaiian prints for large outdoor umbrellas when he came across Shaheen’s 1950s “Tiki Pareo” design. After contacting Hawaii’s pioneer textile company, he learned he was the first to request one of its creations for umbrellas, which were eventually made in Switzerland.

Speaking of Shaheen originals, Hawaii Insider reader Heartmasq reminisced in a Jan. 5 comment about using its fabric to shocking effect (at least for the early 1960s: “.. my 1st attempt at ‘runway fashion’ was in Jr High (1963). My friend & I sewed up some tiny triangle bra bikini tops & super baggie drawstring bottoms out of Shaheen Hawaiian flowers material, which we wore under [me] a leopardskin full coat & [her] an army jacket. We got 3-day suspensions for shocking the parents at the Home Ec show.”